Conversations with Davros
by JazzT
Summary: First awakening - Set between Destiny and Resurrection of the Daleks.
1. First awakening

# Conversations with Davros… 

Part 1. First awakening

Jaruzel was there when they put the old man into the cryo-containment unit. He was still frozen when they'd transferred him, so it wasn't until six months later that he actually got to speak to the old boy. The new unit was more reliable than the one he'd been put in back on his home world, Skaro, but it still required periodic checks. Jaruzel had been assigned to defrost this particular criminal every six months just to make sure he was still ticking. He didn't think for one second that he wouldn't be. They'd all heard the stories of how hard it had been to kill Davros. The Thals had dropped bombs on him, putting him into his wheelchair. The Daleks, his own creations, had shot him. He'd lain dormant for millennia, while the selfsame Daleks went of to pillage the universe, and still he'd survived! There's no stopping the old codger, thought Jaruzel as he unlocked the cryo-chamber controls. In silence, he tapped out the security codes on the frost-covered keypad, and waited as the chamber slowly defrosted Davros for the first time since his initial incarceration.

As expected, Davros didn't have the fastest wake-up time after being in the cooler for more than a year. It had been at least an hour before the clawed hand shuddered into life. His mechanical third eye glowed weakly in the dimmed lights and a weak, rasping, wheeze blew mist from the slit he called a mouth. "Huuurrgghh. Where? Where am I?" A taloned finger flicked a switch on his chairs control panel. "Why have my motor circuits been deactivated?" The switch was flicked backwards and forwards in annoyance. "Where are my Daleks? Why are they not before me?" He hissed. "Where…" He stopped as he heard Jaruzel shift in his chair. "Who is that? Where are you? Show yourself before me." Jaruzel stood up, and walked over to the chair, just slightly out of reach of the emaciated scientist. "Welcome back to the land of the living Davros. You are on a maximum security prison station, and the guest of honor." Davros was silent, digesting the information slowly. "Prison ship? Why am I here? I have done no crime." The mechanically assisted voice purred, as he spoke. Like a cat who was being stroked by its owner in the knowledge it had left the corpse of a dead bird at the door. Jaruzel shook his head. "You have been tried for crimes against all sentient life. The charge was the creation of the Daleks, sentence was passed accordingly." The cripple gasped as he feigned astonishment. "My Daleks were designed to be a force for good! Not evil. I cannot be tried for the independent actions of my creations. Would you try a person for making a gun that was used to kill? I think not." Jaruzel sighed, and kicked away some of the frigid clouds of air. "No I wouldn't. But then I didn't try you. I just make sure you survive the cryo-chamber for the rest of my career. Believe me, I'm not too fond of the idea of having to defrost you every six months for the rest of my working life." A sneer crossed Davros' face. "I should not worry about looking after me for the rest of your career." His clawed hand beckoned Jaruzel closer. "Come. I wish to talk. Tell me what has been happening in my absence." Jaruzel walked back to the control panel, and picked up a small pot. "First we have to get some food inside you." He walked back to Davros, and perched the pot on the front of his chair. Davros looked down. "And what is this?" Jaruzel was wheeling a chair over to the trapped scientist. "That? Well, we both know your digestive system isn't really up to scratch. This has ll the nutrients you need, plus some medical nanobots to try and clear up some of the radiation and genetic damage you've suffered." The hacking sound of Davros's laugh echoed throughout the cold chamber. "That is most generous of you." Jaruzel sat down. "Why did you do it? Why create something as foul as the Daleks?" Davros took another sip from the pot. "It was an experiment. The Daleks were meant to be a new breed of battle soldiers. The aim was to tip the balance in our war with the Thals." Jaruzel nodded. He'd heard about this from the captain when he'd been given the duty. "That doesn't explain why they are so evil." Davros looked thoughtful for a moment. "The first daleks were augmented Kaleds. The sci-corp thought they had acheived the perfect soldier. Pah! They had created a creature that had a conscience. I could see further than that, much further. I was much younger then. I had only just joined the elite group. The Thals had discovered what we had tried to do. They also discovered where the original elite bunker had been. Decades of genetic research was destroyed in an instant." Somehow Davros seemed defeated. "What happened?" The old man snarled, as he remembered what had happened to him on that fateful day.

"I had been working with accelerated evolution for a number of years. Limited success had pushed my area of research into the dark. It was ironic that the Thals provided the breakthrough that I needed. Of the original elite, I was the only one to survive the blast. Because of the Thals, I was crippled. Burnt by radiation and scarred for life. I spent years designing my life support systems, while radiation induced cancer slowly ate me alive." His remaining hand shook with rage. "You asked what made me do it. Revenge." He hissed. "Revenge for my people. Revenge for what they did to me.The Thals deserve to be exterminated from the face of the Universe. The Daleks were designed to do just that. It defines their existence. The Thals and all their ideals must be exterminated! At whatever the cost!" Jaruzel gently pushed his wheeled chair back slightly. Davros continued. "I was working in the main bunker on my latest creation. My original idea had been to accelerate the evolution of certain crustaceans. I had achieved a modest success with some bi-valves. They were capable of air breathing, and had limited locomotion on land. Very heavily armoured with their shells, they were a promising strain. My laboratory was a sealed bio-containment unit. Some of the other elite were a little frightened by my work. Fools. So they had me pushed into a cramped laboratory, one that saved my life." Such a long talk was obviously tiring, as Davros had started to wheeze badly. Jaruzel got up and wheeled his chair back to the main console. "Time, I think, to stop for a while. I'll see you in six months Davros. We can continue your story then." Davros spluttered and spat with indignation. "What! You have just woken me up!" Heard Jaruzel, as the glass wall of the cryo-chamber dropped to the floor, cutting off the insane scientist's rantings. A frigid mist filled the chamber, and the noise quietly went away. Jaruzel shook his head. Time to get back to making the replacement components for the old man's chair, he thought as he walked out of the room.


	2. Upgrades

The third eye in Davros' forehead flickered into dim life. The slumped figure shivered slightly, and the emaciated head slowly pulled itself erect. The once cold, grey, ancient hand slowly rose up from his lap, and relaxed into its familiar position on the right hand side of the chair. Jaruzel looked up from behind the chair. Most of the panels were open, showing the grotesque melding of man and machine. The stump of Davros' torso was embedded in the soft green glow of his life-support systems. "How do you feel?" Asked Jaruzel.Davros held his hand up. The old leaden grey skin now had a slight pinkish tinge to it. "Stronger." He whispered, turning his hand back and forth; studying it. Within his mind, the chair's computer system informed him that the primary life-support systems were now back online. "What have you been doing?" Jaruzel was picking the crumbled remains of an old power card from the back of the chair. "Oh a couple of repairs. One or two upgrades, stealing a little technology and adding some new stuff. I've spent the last six months rebuilding your primary life-support systems. I've just finished installing the replacements. They should be better than the originals. Things have come along a bit over the last thousand years." System parameters scrolled rapidly through the old scientists mind. The onboard computer was rapidly learning and testing the new systems, integrating them with the old. "Most satisfactory. You have quite a considerable technical skill. You are to be commended." His clawed fingers flicked a switch on the console in front of him. Jaruzel stood up, and flicked it back again. "Your drive systems are still off-line. There's a problem with the magnetic resonance coils. If you try and activate it, your computer won't be able to manage the integrity of the super conducting rollers. They'll go off like a shrapnel grenade." Davros hissed. "Then why isn't this being reported to me?" Jaruzel sighed. "Most of the internal sensor arrays are burnt out, or reporting false data. It, along with a million other things, is on my list of things to do. You can help me by not having a go at me about it. Commander Akona is on my back as it is, I don't need you whinging at me as well." He roughly banged the panel he'd been holding into place. "My apologies. The work that you have done is most exemplary. You have my thanks!" Davros's head turned slightly, and Jaruzel could almost hear the vertebrae grinding. "My vision seems to have improved." The young man stood up, brushing the thousand-year-old Skaro dust from him. Er, yes. I brought you out of cold storage two months ago to install that." Davros looked up. "You, did not wake me?" Jaruzel busied himself with re-attaching a panel on the front of the chair. "Um, no. It wasn't official you see." A slight smile quivered across Davros' lips. The hand reached up to probe the area around the prosthetic. "It is larger. Yet it does not take power from the chair." Jaruzel finished fixing the panel in place. "No, it derives power from your bodies electrolytes. I'm sorry about the size, but I just couldn't make it any smaller. I don't have access to the nano-tech lab they use for maintaining some of the cyborg prisoners. As far as they are concerned, your mechanical and you're going to stay that way. "I assume that you do not agree with that ascertain? That is most admirable." The smile still flickered, much like a flame from a boiler that flicks around the edge of the door. "I've got a lot of work here Davros. Why don't you tell me the rest of that story? You were in your lab?" Davros stiffened, and then slowly relaxed. "Yes. I was working in my laboratory. I was attempting to raise the intelligence of my latest strain of warrior crustacea. I remember the alarms. The entire bunker was drowning in the wailing noise of the sirens. It is strange. I can still hear the sound of the warhead screaming down upon us. The isolation laboratory I worked in saved my life. It was situated on the edge of the blast, and was the only building that remained. I awoke under sixteen tonnes of concrete. My legs were crushed. The remains of my body were burned, lacerated and riddled with radiation. I was trapped in that pit for three days. Three days of nothing but thinking. Three days that set the course for the rest of my life. The Daleks were born in that glowing pit of radiation. When I was rescued they did not think I would survive. I spent years of agony, lying in a bed in a hospital. Years, designing the life-support systems that you now repair. By the time the first experimental Dalek came on-line, I was four hundred years old. I designed a new race, one that had a true purpose. That is what all other races lack. All races look to their world and ask it why they are there. The Daleks do not need to do that. I created them for one purpose, and one purpose only, the total, and utter, annihilation of the Thal race." Jaruzel fixed the last panel in place. You're built-in repair systems will be able to sort out drive train. I can't do that. I don't have the skill." He sat down on the chair opposite the old scientist. "So why did they turn on you? The Daleks." The shaking hand grasped the side of the chair. "They were exceptional creatures. They did in one night, that which the combined effort of the Kaled race had not been able to achieve in over two thousand years of war. The destruction was total. There were no survivors within the Kaled dome. When they returned they discovered that they had fulfilled their one purpose. That, coupled with the ability to better themselves, they decided to make their own purpose. Unfortunately, I was not amongst their immediate plans. I realised my error too late, and was shot when I attempted to shut them down. So you see, it was a mistake. A single glorious mistake that began to conquer the universe." Jaruzel shivered. "I have to start the containment unit again." Davros sighed. In his mind a small red icon turned green. His hand depressed a switch on the console of his chair. "Very well, if you must. I assure you we will speak again. Perhaps much sooner than you realise." Jaruzel was still frowning when he walked out of the containment unit. What had the old buzzard meant by that? Sooner than you think?

…


End file.
